My first instinct on a snowy day in New York is to stay in my pajamas, turn on my heat, and pop in a few DVDs. While that might have been a perfectly nice way to spend last week’s blustery blizzard, I decided to take on the icy winds long enough to walk over to the IFC Center so I could spend the day in a warm theatre, watching the most dark and grisly of movies. Three movies to be exact. I’m talking about the epic RED RIDING trilogy that is currently touring the country, and possibly playing on your TV, courtesy of IFC On Demand.
RED RIDING is based on four novels by British author David Peace. They are fiction, though they are all inspired by real life headlines and cases, and the second film even makes the true case of the Yorkshire Ripper its centerpiece. The other two films bookend that story with a mystery involving the gruesome murders of a young girl, who is found with swan wings sewn into her back. It’s a haunting image and the horrific crime takes ten years to be completely solved, with many, many side mysteries that tie together the murdered girl, and very corrupt, immoral, and evil characters including police officers, reporters, clergymen, and land developers.
At five and a half hours this is a truly epic saga, but the beauty of it is that each film tells its own individual story and stands on its own. Each film shows crime and corruption from different points of view, and stars three main characters that appear in only one film apiece, each members of different professions affected by the crimes. The first film, subtitled “1974,” focuses on a young newspaper journalist, Eddie Dunford, played by Andrew Garfield. Dunford begins the story as a hotshot reporter, blooming with confidence, but by the end of the film he is practically driven insane by all the horrible things he’s witnessed, and from the mental and physical torture he has gone through. His descent is tragic and terrifying to watch, as we see a man who is surrounded by so much corruption that he has virtually no one to turn to who won’t find a way to punish him for what he knows.
The second film, subtitled “1980,” follows police constable Peter Hunter, played by Paddy Considine, one of those great actors that deserves to be a bigger star in this country. Hunter is brought to Yorkshire to help try to make sense of the case of the Yorkshire Ripper, which has left the police force baffled for years. Hunter faces the same incompetent and, in some cases, corrupt police force that was handling the child murders in 1974. Things have only gotten worse in the department. Hunter’s personal life is in such shambles that he hardly pays attention to the case of the Yorkshire Ripper at all. While the Ripper is eventually caught, Hunter has ignored so many things that tie the detectives to other crimes that he doesn’t realize what the real danger has been all along. The second film combines two of David Peace’s books, and is unfortunately the shortest of the trilogy, when it should have been the longest. At first glance, “1980” seems to have very little to do with the first film, and becomes almost a standalone story. It isn’t really until the third film that you realize just how crucial so many of the details of “1980” were.
The final film, dubbed “1983,” begins with the disappearance of another child, with eerily similar details to the murder from 1974, making inexperienced lawyer John Piggot, well played by Mark Addy, suspect that the man accused of the original murder might be innocent after all. This film also brings to the foreground Detective Maurice Jobson, played by the excellent and underrated David Morrissey, who is featured in all three films. Jobson is a high-ranking police official who is central to the case, but it isn’t until the third film when we finally understand his full involvement, as we watch him come to grips with some of the mistakes of his past and grow a conscience in the present. Unfortunately, one of the ways he does this is with the help of a psychic, which is one of the weakest aspects of the film. Up until this moment, all three films have been grounded in a gritty reality. Suddenly this psychic woman starts getting messages from the other side, and information that she couldn’t possibly know unless she were the real killer. (She’s not.) This fantasy element kind of took me out of the film, but it’s just a small misstep.
The third film does provide definitive answers to almost all the mysteries from the saga, including the identity of the child killer. This, sadly, didn’t come as a surprise to me, as it ended up being the one person who I suspected since early in the second film. There seemed to be so many clues pointed to this person for so long, that I was convinced that they wouldn’t possibly make that person the killer because it was much too obvious. Though the identity of the killer wasn’t too surprising, the horrid details surrounding the killer’s process were still gripping, disturbing, and fascinating.
My other complaint with the final film is that it ends too abruptly. Just like with the second film, here is where you really start to feel that whole other book that wasn’t filmed. The film provides the series with closure of its central mystery, but there are so many characters in this story guilty of so many horrible things that we are left with a lot of loose ends. We never find out what becomes of a few key corrupt members of the police force. Really horrible, sinister people. Do they just get away with everything? Maybe so. And that would be fine and fitting, considering the rest of the story, but it still would be nice to know for sure. Even title cards and an epilogue would have been an improvement.
It isn’t just director Julian Jarrold’s beautiful and haunting imagery that makes “1974” the best of the three films. It also works because it is the only film that truly stands on its own and tells a complete story, even with ambiguity of the killer’s identity and other crimes left unsolved. Andrew Garfield’s performance as Eddie Dunford is sharp and devastating. The film succeeds so well because we are seeing these horrible events unfold through his eyes, and while the story is far from over at the end of the first film, the experience has figuratively destroyed Dunford to the point that he can no longer be any part of it. He leaves that up to us. The other two films are both very good, but they seem to rely too much on having to explain hazy references from the mysteries in the first film, rather than building their own stories into something that can hold its own.
James Marsh, the Academy award winning director of “Man on Wire,” does an excellent job of giving “1980” a fantastic raw feel of inner workings of a corrupt police force, reminiscent of something like “The Wire,” but the screenplay lets him down. I suppose at this point its foolish to hope that the cast will reunite to film the fourth book, but it would help make the series feel more fleshed out and complete. Anand Tucker doesn’t provide “1983” with as much visual flare as the other two films, but it has an ominous tone that works well, even if it feels like the most mainstream of the trilogy. It’s possible to enjoy each film on its own, but the joy that one gets when you discover a new piece of the puzzle which gives an entire new meaning to the mystery is just too much fun to deny yourself. I’ve seen several plays that offer this experience, such as Tom Stoppard’s “Coast of Utopia” and Alan Aykbourn’s “The Norman Conquests,” but we don’t see this structure nearly enough in film.
RED RIDING most reminded me of the phenomenal, (and superior), miniseries “State of Play.” RED RIDING offers the nice spin of telling the story from multiple points of view with different directors and visual styles, but “State of Play” had a more complete and solid narrative. That epic six hour miniseries was then turned into a two hour American film which cut and condensed all of the rich details that made the original so satisfying. The American version of “State of Play” was actually quite good by American adult thriller standards, and it included a terrific performance by the great Benjamin Affleck. Anyone who saw the remake and not the original miniseries might have been impressed, but those of us in the other boat know just how much was missing. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that America is taking a crack at RED RIDING with a studio adaptation, though at least directed by a talented Brit, Ridley Scott. I don’t doubt that Scott could make a fine film based on the series, but by trying to cram the entire story into one large film would deny the audience of all the little details that make the crimes and the solving of them so believable and compelling.
Even with the films sometimes being uneven, seeing the whole RED RIDING trilogy is an engrossing experience, one not quickly forgotten. In addition to the performances by the excellent lead actors, the film includes supporting performances by a who’s who list of great British actors sprinkled through all three films, including Sean Bean, Rebecca Hall, Jim Carter, Peter Mullan, Daniel Mays, and Cara Seymour, just to name a few. Whether you see them all at once or spread out, I’m sure you won’t be bored by the long running time. These are essential films for fans of the serial killer procedural, ranking up with some of the best of the genre, such as “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Zodiac.” It’s dark, disgusting, and disturbing stuff, and it can be tough to watch at times, but we all need to see something sick and twisted every once and a while, don’t we?
-Johnny Pomatto
